Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki ordered Iraq's military commanders on Tuesday to speed up preparations for a U.S.-backed crackdown in Baghdad after a string of attacks killed hundreds of people in recent days.Addressing Iraqi generals over what he called a "delay" in a plan seen as a last-ditch effort to prevent Iraq from pitching into all-out civil war, Maliki said: "I call on you to quickly finish the preparations so that we don't disappoint people." His words came three days after a suicide truck bomb killed 135 people in a Shi'ite area of Baghdad in the worst single bombing since the U.S.-led 2003 invasion. There is growing frustration among Iraqis over the delay in launching the offensive that Maliki first announced nearly a month ago. ... http://abcnews.go.com

In the neighborhood President Bush visited right after Hurricane Katrina, the U.S. government gave $84.5 million to more than 10,000 households. But Census figures show fewer than 8,000 homes existed there at the time. Now the government wants back a lot of the money it disbursed across the region. The Federal Emergency Management Administration has determined nearly 70,000 Louisiana households improperly received $309.1 million in grants, and officials acknowledge those numbers are likely to grow. In the chaotic period after two deadly hurricanes, Katrina and Rita, slammed the Gulf Coast in 2005 — Katrina making landfall in late August, followed by Rita in late September — federal officials scrambled to provide help in hard-hit areas such as submerged neighborhoods near the French Quarter....http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/17002441/

Zimbabwe's national security minister has told the country's last remaining white farmers that they will be jailed if they refuse to abide by a deadline that passed over the weekend for them to leave their farms, according to a newspaper report on Monday.The official Chronicle newspaper quoted the minister Didymus Mutasa as saying police would be "unleashed" to deal with white farmers who ignored the eviction notice."Those farmers who do not comply with the orders to vacate the land will be dealt with severely," said the minister, known to be close to President Robert Mugabe. The deadline was on Saturday.Farming officials said there were no immediate reports of arrests but they feared the worst....http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,250483,00.html

Fast-moving flames trapped a dozen people inside a burning house early Tuesday, killing 10 — six of them children — and leaving the only survivors hospitalized, authorities said.Most of the victims were dead by the time firefighters reached them, Nelson County Coroner Field Houghlin said. Neighbors said the two survivors had be held from running back into the flames for the screaming children."It may have been an explosion in the center of the house. The fire flashed very quickly," said Bardstown Fire Department spokesman Tom Isaac.Two of the children were found dead under the bodies of adults inside the charred one-story brick home, said Emergency Medical Services director Joe Prewitt....http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2007-02-06-kentucky-fire_x.htm?csp=34

The former U.S. occupation chief in Iraq on Tuesday defended the way he haphazardly doled out billions of dollars in Iraqi funds after the U.S. invasion as Democrats began a two-year effort to scrutinize fraud, waste and abuse under the Bush administration. L. Paul Bremer III, who ran Iraq after the U.S. invasion, said in prepared testimony that he did the best he could to kick-start the Iraqi economy, “which was flat on its back.” Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Calif., chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, disagreed, telling a House hearing that Bremer failed to establish any control over the money after 363 tons of cash was loaded onto airplanes and sent into the war zone in 2003. Waxman, one of the chief investigators for Democrats who took control of Congress this year, said U.S. officials had “no way of knowing whether the cash would wind up in enemy hands.” ...http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/17007333/

One of four ministers who oversaw three weeks of intensive counseling for the Rev. Ted Haggard said the disgraced minister emerged convinced that he is "completely heterosexual." Haggard also said his sexual contact with men was limited to the former male prostitute who came forward with sexual allegations, the Rev. Tim Ralph of Larkspur told The Denver Post for a story in Tuesday's edition. "He is completely heterosexual," Ralph said. "That is something he discovered. It was the acting-out situations where things took place. It wasn't a constant thing." Ralph said the board spoke with people close to Haggard while investigating his claim that his only extramarital sexual contact happened with Mike Jones. The board found no evidence to the contrary.Yep he only did it once he has seen the light and is now cured. Halleluiah and pass the collection plate the con game can start again...http://www.cnn.com/2007/US/02/06/haggard.ap/index.html?eref=rss_us